


Take Shelter

by vulpesvortex



Category: Mission: Impossible (Movies), Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011), Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Career Ending Injuries, Domestic, Fake Identities, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Living Together, M/M, Multilingualism, On the Run, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-15
Updated: 2016-03-15
Packaged: 2018-05-25 17:12:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6203890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vulpesvortex/pseuds/vulpesvortex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the IMF vanishes into thin air, Benji and Will are forced to go into hiding in Paris.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take Shelter

**Author's Note:**

> This fic takes place in a world where:  
> \- the events of Ghost Protocol and Rogue Nation are only 6-12 months apart, meaning that Hunley becomes head of the newly reinstated IMF at the end of 2012, not 2015. This fic is set in early 2015.  
> \- Jane rejoins the team after the reinstatement. (It is my personal headcanon that she briefly took a training/recruitment position after recovering from the gunshot wound in MIGP).  
> \- Will and Benji did not immediately shag like bunnies after MIGP (I know, I know, it’s hard to believe).
> 
> Thanks go out to [Pond_Melody](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Pond_Melody) for leaving the comment that finally gave me the impetus to finish this, to [benjidunnimf](http://benjidunnimf.tumblr.com) for beta and suggestions, and of course to [tinypi](http://tinypi.tumblr.com) for support, cheerleading, and willingness to engage in 4am text conversations about how much pain I should or should not inflict on Will. 
> 
> Suggested soundtrack: Mess is Mine - Vance Joy, Careless - EL VY, Held In the Arms of Your Words - Tired Pony. Fic graphic [here](http://foxesonstilts.tumblr.com/post/141091764267/take-shelter-by-vulpesvortex-benjibrandt-r).
> 
> Translations of the French and German dialogue are in the end notes for whoever wants them. 
> 
> And finally, yes, the Galerie d’Anatomie Comparée exists and is exactly like I’ve described it. I highly recommend paying a visit if you are ever in Paris.

It started when they lost their communications link to HQ. One moment, Yusuf was guiding them through the maze of hallways around the factory’s floors and the next persistent static crackled in their ears. Benji did his best to try and reestablish the link in situ, but that proved impossible. The frequency was empty.  
  
After that, things quickly went to hell in a handbag.    
  
Benji couldn’t find the control room, and over their own comm connection he heard gunfire and the snap of bone as Ethan ran into a number of henchmen. On the other side of the factory an explosion went off, loud enough to make the ground shake and knock an emergency floor plan off the wall. Benji grabbed it, scanning it quickly, and tore open a door on his right. The guards were distracted, yelling agitatedly at the videofeed of the burning rooms on the monitors, and Benji had incapacitated two before they even realized he was in the room.  
  
As he slid into the chair and pulled the keyboard towards him, he registered Brandt’s voice on the comm, rough with an underlying edge of distress that Benji was sure wasn’t obvious to anyone but his teammates.  
  
“ _You don’t have to do this,”_ Will’s voice said. There was a crackle of feedback, and Benji scrambled to find Brandt on the monitors, pulling up feed after feed of the factory’s many floors, rooms, and hallways.  
  
He pulled up the videofeed of the assembly room just in time to hear Brandt yell “No!” and a barrage of gunfire explode in his ear. On the screen, muzzles flashed in the darkened room, flames licking under the door in the background. Several people in white lab coats fell to the floor in quick succession, some writhing in pain, others stilled immediately. The dark-suited figure of Johannes Eichen disappeared in the right corner of the screen.  
  
“Will!” Benji yelled, pounding once hard at the keyboard. ”Jesus christ.”  
  
“Benji.”  Ethan’s voice in his ear. Calm, but he sounded like he was running. Benji saw him flash across one of the monitors, then disappear from view. “Get out of here, this place is about to blow.”  
  
“But-!”  
  
“Get out now! Meet Jane at the rendez-vous.”  
  
Ethan’s comm clicked off.

 

* * *

  
  
By the time Benji found Brandt in the assembly room, six people were lying dead and the factory was burning down. Will’s body was half-covered by a young woman in a white coat, a perfect round bullet wound in her forehead, and his face was bloody. For a second Benji was convinced he was looking at the seventh corpse, but then Will coughed and tried to move. Benji pulled him out from under the woman’s body, ignoring the limp _thud_ the body made as it rolled onto the floor. Will moaned in pain as he was moved, and Benji noticed the blood soaking through Will’s dress pants at the thigh.  
  
“Are you alright?” he asked urgently, keeping his voice low. He didn’t know if there was anyone else left inside the building, and he didn’t fancy getting shot in the back while he was worrying over Brandt. A burning beam detached itself from the ceiling and crashed to the ground behind him in a burst of flames and sparks and gave him hope everyone still left was smart enough to be rushing for the exits. Still, he did a quick scan of the three doors in the room. No one was there.  
  
“Hnng.” Will’s eyes rolled, the whites showing, and his head tipped limply against his shoulder. He was barely conscious, and obviously in a great deal of pain. “Benj?”  
  
“Alright,” Benji said, hefting one of Brandt’s arms across his shoulders and lifting him against his side. “Let’s rock ‘n roll.”

 

* * *

  
  
In the factory parking lot, Benji knocked in the window of a little red Honda and parked a near-unconscious Brandt in the backseat. The wound on his leg was still bleeding, and Benji tied Brandt’s suit jacket around it to stem it before slipping into the driver’s seat to hotwire the car.  
  
As they peeled out of the parking lot, flames burst out of the top windows of the factory building in the rear view mirror.  
  
That fire was about to attract a lot of attention.  
  
Benji briskly steered the Honda onto the A5, Brandt letting out a soft moan in the back as the sharp turn pressed him against the seat.  
  
“Sorry, buddy,” Benji said, flicking an apologetic look at Brandt in the rear view mirror, but Will’s eyes were closed in pain.  
  
He needed to get Brandt to a hospital. Three fire trucks passed them on the autobahn, going in the other direction, sirens wailing. Benji sped up. Soon emergency services wouldn’t be the only ones heading that way: they needed to get out of the interest radius ASAP.  
  
This time of night, the autobahn was mostly deserted, populated only by the occasional station wagon driving home late, and the emergency service vehicles crossing them on the opposite side with their flashing lights and wailing sirens.  
  
_Darmstadt, Mannheim, Heidelberg._ The signs above the motorway listed places he didn’t know.  
  
Brandt shifted in the backseat, and Benji realized he could smell the irony tang of blood in the car. They needed a hospital.  
  
He pulled onto A67 for Stuttgart, driving as fast as the car would go.    
  
As they got further away from Frankfurt, the road got quieter, and Benji pulled out his phone to look up the address for a hospital.  
  
He got a sinking feeling in his stomach when he couldn’t connect to the IMF server, not even using one of the programming backdoors and a satellite. This was bad.  
  
Frustrated, he booted up Google Maps.

 

* * *

  
  
The ER at the Katharinenhospital in Stuttgart was busy when Benji finally dragged Brandt in, even though it was after four. It was Saturday night, so there were the usual alcohol-related injuries of beer bottle cuts, driving accidents, falls, and broken noses. Victims of a car accident had been rushed in and a young man holding a scooter helmet sat waiting, cradling what appeared to be a broken thumb and index finger.  
  
The triage nurse’s eyes widened when she spotted Benji and Will in the doorway.  
  
She strode up to them, looking all-business as she reached out to take Will’s pulse. “ _Was ist passiert?_ ”  
  
Benji was suddenly grateful the wound in Will’s leg wasn’t a bullet wound, but a gash from a metal beam, deep though it was. “Car accident,” Benji said, racking his brain for whatever German remained of his language introductions during the IMF training. “Um. _Unfall_. _Autounfall_ ,” Benji said uncertainly.  
  
The nurse grabbed Brandt under the arms, helping to shoulder his weight, and yelled something in German. Another nurse rode up a stretcher, and together the three of them loaded Brandt onto the stretcher. Will's pained yell tore at Benji's heart. A doctor was called over who undid the suit jacket around Brandt’s thigh, peering into the wound, and ran a quick check of Will’s vitals, speaking to the nurse in rapid German. All Benji caught was “Chirurg” and “Operationssaal” before they wheeled Will out of the ER.    
  
The nurse pointed him towards a chair. “ _Bitte warten Sie hier._ ”

 

* * *

  
  
It took two hours for Brandt to get out of surgery. Benji spent them in the OR waiting area, nervously checking the gun hidden under his jacket, too tense to drink the coffee one of the nurses brought him. He wasn’t convinced they hadn’t been followed. Their dash across the autobahn hadn’t exactly been inconspicuous to anyone who knew where to look, and Eichen had got away. He wasn’t above some petty revenge for blowing up one of his factories.  
  
So Benji kept watch over the doors to the OR and the exit equally, hand ready on his gun.  
  
Finally a nurse came to tell him Mr. Brown – no way had he checked Brandt in under his own name - had come out of surgery and had been moved to a private room. The doctor would come to speak with him shortly.

 

* * *

  
  
“ _Wo ist er_?” Benji said as soon as the doctor came to get him.  
  
“ _Wir sind gleich da,_ ” she said, walking him down the hall and into the elevator.    
  
“ _Kann ich ihn sehen_?”  
  
“ _Gehoren Sie zur Familie_?”  
  
“ _Ja_. Yeah!” Benji jumped on that eagerly. Pretending to be family always worked. “Yeah, I’m..” Benji cast a desperate look across the doctor’s shoulder, trying to catch a glimpse of Will in one of the rooms, to come up with something plausible. No one would believe they were brothers. Cousins?  
  
The doctor’s eyes softened at his obvious distress, giving him a sympathetic look. " _Ich verstehe_."  
  
“I. Ich-” Benji stuttered.  
  
The doctor squeezed his shoulder supportively.  
  
Oh! Well. That worked too.  
  
They turned down the hall, and the doctor pulled open a door and there was Will, asleep in a hospital bed. One of his arms lay above the covers, tan against the white sheets, and he was covered in a dozen little bandages from all the cuts from the explosion.  
  
Benji patted Will’s arm. “Hey, buddy,” he cast a careful look over the vital signs on the monitor, “you gave me a bit of a scare.”  
  
“He should be waking up soon,” the doctor said in English.  
  
Benji did a double take. “You speak English now?”  
  
“Of course,” she said, checking the saline drip in Will’s arm with the same dignified calm she seemed to do everything else. “You addressed me in German, though. It’s only polite to reply in kind.”  
  
“What’s going to happen to him now?” Benji asked, letting that one slide for now.  
  
“We will keep him here for a few days to make sure there are no complications with the wound, and he will be given a course of antibiotics, as well as painkillers to manage the pain. Later on some reconstructive surgery may be required, and of course he will need physical therapy to regain full use of the leg.”  
  
“But he will? Get full use of the leg back?”  
  
“Possibly. Some of the major muscles in the leg were cut, it is likely there will be some residual damage. The therapy should help, but I cannot make any promises.”  
  
She made a final note on Will’s chart with a flourish before putting it back in the holder at the foot of the bed. “I will leave you two alone for a while. Press the button if he has not woken up in an hour.” She pointed at the red “CALL” button on the nightstand.  
  
“Yes, thank you,” Benji said, eyes never leaving Will’s still form. He didn’t know how he was going to get Will out of the hospital like this.  
  
“And Mr. McFly?”  
  
It took Benji a moment to react to his fake name. “Yes?”  
  
“Your friend’s going to be okay,” the doctor said reassuringly.  
  
As soon as she was out the door, Benji leapt into action, grabbing the chart and copying the instructions into his phone.  
  
“I’ll be right back, Will,” he said, though Will hadn’t stirred.  

 

* * *

  
  
Benji returned to Will’s room half an hour later, having successfully evaded the night nurse at the dispensary and stolen a pair of sweats from an orderly’s gym bag in the locker room.  
  
“Hey,” he said, seeing Will had woken up and was trying to reach his chart.  
  
“Best leave that.” Benji grabbed Will’s reaching hand and returned it to the sheets. “I already got pictures if you wanna have a look later.” Actually, it was probably smarter to just take the thing with him, it might come in useful. Benji stuffed it into his bag.  
  
Will nodded hazily.  
  
“We gotta get out of here. Eichen may still be after us. We gotta get off the map.”  
  
Brandt waved a hand at him to help him out of the bed.  
  
“I got you some sweats. Sorry, this is probably going to hurt.” Benji helped lift Brandt’s legs over the edge of the bed one by one, one of Brandt’s arms across his shoulders for balance.  
  
“‘S okay, I can’t feel a thing.”  
  
Benji frowned. “Can’t feel-? But the doctor said-”  
  
“I mean, I got morphine coming out my ears, I don’t think I’d feel it if you stabbed me right now.”  
  
“Let’s not try that,” Benji said bleakly.  
  
“Yeah, maybe let’s not.” Will looked at the pair of grey sweats in Benji’s hand. “Okay, how you wanna do this?”  
  
“Lift your feet.”  
  
Benji pulled the sweats over Will’s feet, dragging them up to mid-thigh, then handed them off to Will. He put a stabilizing hand on Will’s back, looking away while Will lifted himself and pulled them up to his hips.  
  
“Done.”  
  
“Alright, take one of my shirts.” Benji pulled off his checked button-down and handed it to Will, leaving himself in his _Star Wars_ t-shirt and jeans. The shirt was a little tight on Will's more muscular chest but they didn’t bother to do up more than a few buttons so it didn’t really matter.  
  
He grabbed the crutches leaned against the corner, left in case Brandt needed to get to the bathroom in the night, handed them to Will, and grabbed the bag with the stolen medicine. As an afterthought, he pulled his t-shirt down over the gun stuffed in the back of his waistband.  
  
“I think we’re good to go.”  
  
“Lead on,” Will said, pointing one of his crutches down the hall.

 

* * *

  
  
“You’re pretty quick on those things,” Benji remarked while they scanned the parking lot for suitable cars, Will hobbling next to him on the crutches.  
  
“Broke my leg when I was fourteen,” Brandt said, grinning.  
  
“Contact sport?” Benji pointed at a sporty blue Peugeot coupe. “This one looks okay.”  
  
“Wall-climbing,” Brandt said. “Yeah, ‘s good. You switch the plates, I’ll wire it.”  
  
Benji got to work screwing the plates off the BMW next to the Peugeot. He could see Brandt’s legs sticking out of the driver’s side door and couldn’t help but smile. Despite the crutches leaned against the car as a reminder of the close shave they’d had, breaking out of the hospital was always a little exciting, a little bit James Bond in some primal, childhood way.     
  
They drove the car into the outskirts of Stuttgart, looking for an empty house to crash in. Eventually they passed a semi with rubble in the front yard and mail piled on the doorstep, a “for sale” sign listing sideways in front of it. Benji climbed into the yard from the back, shimmied up the drainpipe, and knocked in a window on the second floor. From the staircase he could see the alarm was still live, but it didn’t take more than a short sprint and some wire-futzing to disable it. He picked the lock from the inside and let in Will.   
  
“Some furniture woulda been nice, but should see us through,” he said, half-embarrassed he couldn’t offer more comfortable accommodation to an injured man, even if they’d slept in worse places over the years. Will just nodded.

 

* * *

  
  
Benji woke up on the carpeted floor of the upstairs bedroom, disorientated and with a vague dream-memory of explosions still looping in his brain. Will was lying on the other side of the small room, on his back under a sheet of construction tarp and newspapers, his leg propped up on a bag of cement mix.  
  
“You look like a hobo,” Benji said, uncurling from under the curtain he’d used as a blanket.    
  
He could see the corners of Brandt’s mouth tip up. “Insulation.”  
  
Benji checked his watch. “We should get up if we wanna make it to Heidelberg by noon.”  
  
Brandt threw off the covers, groaning loudly. “Hand me that medicine bag.”  
  
“I don’t have it,” Benji said, eyes widening.  
  
“Fuck,” Brandt groaned, this time with more frustration than pain. “I left it in the car last night. Shit. That’s stupid. That’s Going on the Lam 101, man. You run, you carry the important shit with you. I musta been out of it."  
  
“I’ll go get it.”  
  
Benji was already getting up to do it, but Will put a hand on his arm.  
  
“No, I can make it to the car.”

 

* * *

  
  
Getting Will down the stairs with his crutches and no pain meds was an adventure in its own right, and they ended up having to speed all the way to Heidelberg to make the noon rendez-vous.  
  
They parked the Peugeot in an alley, and Benji dashed across the square to the Alte Brucke with all the locks on it, leaving Brandt out of sight in the car in case the meet went to shit.  
  
Benji slowed down as he reached the bridge, checking his watch again. It was ten to twelve. Jane was nowhere in sight.  
  
He sat down on a bench, waiting. Noon came and went, and still no Jane. He walked the length of the bridge twice, looking at all the locks to see if something stood out to him. Finally he noticed a turquoise silk scarf tied around the railing, sagging and wet from the morning’s rain. The end was knotted into a complicated Monkey’s Fist, a hollow, ball-shaped knot. Jane had a keychain like that.  
  
His breath held tightly in his throat, he tore the scarf off the railing and undid the damp knot with some difficulty. A piece of paper fell into his palm, Jane’s loopy handwriting on it in ballpoint pen.  
  
_IMF COMPROMISED. HIDE._

* * *

  
  
“That’s all it said?”  
  
“Yeah.” Benji slammed his fist against the steering wheel. “Fuck! What do we do now?”  
  
“We should get out of here.”  
  
“I was thinking a little more long term than the next few minutes.”  
  
“We’re in the next few minutes _right now_.” Will said. “This is a previously-set meet: the date and time are on record somewhere. If IMF’s compromised, we have to get out of here.”  
  
“Yeah, okay.”  
  
Benji started the car, turned cautiously out of the alley, and hit the first road out of town.  

 

* * *

  
  
“Alright, so, you’ve got half the IMF files in your freaky analyst brain archive. There any supply caches round here? Runner packs?”  
  
“By ‘round here’ you mean..?”  
  
“Germany, Europe, whatever. I got a tank fulla gas and I’m not too averse to filling it up without paying either.”  
  
“If the IMF’s gone down they’ll clear the caches just like they did after the Kremlin.”  
  
“There should be _something_ ,” Benji said. “We had a whole train car in Russia.”  
  
“We also had the Secretary covering our tracks.”  
  
“There’s gotta be something,” Benji repeated desperately, staring out the windshield at the rain-slicked autobahn. “At least a runner pack, or- or a Cold War silo, or _something_.”  
  
Brandt grunted.  
  
When the next exit came up, he said, “Go left.”  
  
Benji clicked on the turn signal and changed lanes.  
  
“Where’re we going?” he asked eventually.  
  
“Munich.”

 

* * *

  
  
The runner pack in Munich was a bust.  
  
So was Geneva.  
  
So was Milan.

 

* * *

  
  
By the time they were on the road to Paris, they had stolen a Porsche, and sold it way underprice to a secondhand dealer for cash. They’d changed the plates on the Peugeot three times, and slept in it twice. They ate greasy food at truck stop restaurants, _frankfurter_ _mit pommes_ , spaghetti, _schnitzel_ and hamburgers. Brandt was sleeping badly and his leg was bothering him. Benji wasn’t sleeping, period.  
  
They’d almost had a run-in with what Benji was pretty convinced were Eichen’s henchmen, a pair of ominous-looking men that had clearly recognized him in line at the coffee counter in a truck stop near Strasbourg and that he’d had to disable in the men’s room, the creeping itch on his neck as they followed him. They didn’t have any identification on them. Benji cursed. Was there somebody else after them? They still hadn’t heard anything from the IMF, and it was starting to drive him nuts. He had no what had happened to the others after Frankfurt. Jane had made it to Heidelberg and the IMF had vanished into thin air, that was about the extent of his knowledge.  
  
Benji tried to breathe evenly, staving off the rush of panic in the driver’s seat with Will in the back of the car, fast asleep. He hadn’t been this alone on a mission ever. He guided, he assisted, he planned, plotted, engineered. He was _dependable_. He wasn’t the one man army Ethan was; he’d never even lead his own team like Will or Jane, though if he needed to he could deal plenty of damage both on his laptop and with a gun. He hadn’t been without support like this since London. Somehow that was a comforting thought. At least things weren’t _that_ fucked yet.  
  
But Benji didn’t think they were going to have any luck with the runner pack in Paris.  
  
It was time they came up with their own solution. Long term, however long that was going to be.

 

* * *

  
  
They passed through another abandoned customs checkpoint and across the border into France. Thank God for the EU free travel policy: they’d been driving across different countries all week and hadn’t even had to get fake passports.  
  
Will had moved to the backseat pretty much permanently, sleeping feverishly and shivering, slipping in and out of coherency.  
  
Benji merged onto the A6 towards Paris. The GPS told him he had six hours to figure out what they were going to do when they got there.  
  
The most important thing was to get a computer, he figured, and a place to stay while he set them up somewhere. They had some cash left. They still hadn’t figured out what had blown up the IMF for the third time in five years, but Benji guessed that was what you got working for an organization that could fold back up into a suitcase at the drop of a hat.  
  
He checked the crumpled paper bag on the passenger seat.  
  
A hotel and a laptop. And medicine.  
  
He was an IMF agent. He could do that, right?

 

* * *

  
  
He did do that. It took three days in the French equivalent of a roach motel on the edge of Montmartre, Brandt sweating deliriously in the queen size bed while Benji worked on the computer setting up identities, siphoning money from seedy accounts in the Caymans, arranging fake passports and documents in case they needed to travel or work.  
  
He’d gone out on the first day to check the runner pack, but all that remained of it was a charred fire extinguisher case at the Gare du Nord. It was time for Plan B.  
  
American expats Benjamin Dinklage and William Barton moved into a flat on the Rue Dumeril in the 13th arrondissement the next day. Benji had to help Will up the three sets of curving, wrought-iron stairs, as there was no elevator and by then Will was too weak with his recently-broken fever to bother with the crutches. In extremis, he supposed he could have managed, but it'd have been a graceless thing, and not something their new neighbours should be subjected to so early in their acquaintance (or ever, really). Not that Benji had met any of their neighbours so far. In fact, he was deeply glad none of them were poking their heads out their doors to observe their struggle up the stairs, or the sparseness of their luggage.  
  
Eventually, they ended up in front of the apartment door, Benji digging in his pocket for the keys, Brandt hitched against his hip. Will frowned at the number on the door - 4F - and let out a hollow snort.  
  
Benji made a inquiring noise at him, and Brandt let out another humourless huff, nodding and tapping his leg. "Unfit for service."  
  
Ah. Brandt had been morose these past few days, Benji suspected on account of the pain and lack of sleep. "I think you should go lie down. I'll unpack."  
  
"That's what I said. Fucking useless," Brandt snapped sourly.  
  
Benji wanted to say something stupid and patronizing  like, "You'll be well again in no time," but held his tongue. Will was tired and in pain. He'd let him rest, and by dinnertime Will would be feeling better, and be quiet and conciliatory. He could wait him out. Right now he was looking forward to finally getting some sleep.

 

* * *

  
  
It took a few days and a small fortune in illegally-acquired medicine, but the fever passed.  
  
After that first hellish week, they settled into a routine with swift ease. Benji got a computer with all the bells and whistles through some black market backchannels and was keeping himself occupied polishing their fake identities, trying to dig up clues to the situation with the IMF online. He left little breadcrumbs for Jane and Ethan to find, reached out to Ilsa in Marrakech, Luther in New York, even to some of his tech support buddies from back in the day.

Brandt took walks. At first it was just physical therapy, to exercise his leg muscles, but he found he liked it. He roamed about Paris on his crutches, exploring parks and squares, alleys, the family-run bakeries in their neighborhood, the tiny specialty museums at the university. He built a map of the city in his brain, step by step, day by day.

The apartment slowly filled with furniture. Will picked up a vintage _Casablanca_ poster from the market at Puces de St-Ouen on one of his trips, which was swiftly joined by _Notorious, Mars Attacks_ and something noir-looking called _Le Samourai_. Yellowed paperbacks in English, French and Russian from the bouquinistes along the Seine mingled with computer cables on their shelves. Their new shoes started to spill out of the little rack under their coats in the hallway.  
  
There was a baker two streets down from their apartment where he went to buy bread in the morning. He tried to get something different every day. Benji goodnaturedly complained the croissants were going to make him fat, but he ate them anyway, dipped in jam with strong black coffee from their French press.  
  
Every Tuesday, one of them went to a payphone on the other side of town and called the emergency redundancy numbers for the IMF. The lines never connected.  
  
The days were slow and long, but not unpleasant. As they passed, the terror of their flight from Germany dimmed in memory; the shock of the IMF’s collapse, the sickly tension of Will’s fever all receded.  
  
It seemed they had made a clean getaway from Eichen. Now they could now only hope for news of their reassignment.  
  
They were alone, and in Paris, and they were waiting.

 

* * *

  
  
" _Puis-je vous aider_?"  
  
Will set the bag of groceries down on the step and turned, moving the crutch handle back into his hand. Looking down, he spotted a young woman.  
  
"I'm sorry?"  
  
"Ah, _excusez-moi_. Can I help you?"  
  
Her voice was heavily accented with French, the distinctive round "oo" in _you_ and throaty "ch" in _can_ , but there was something more there that Brandt couldn’t immediately place. A trace of Arabic? Perhaps Moroccan or Algerian?  
  
Misinterpreting his silence as offense, she lifted a hand. "Sorry, look like you have trouble."  
  
"No! That is, yes, please, if you would. I didn't think about the stairs," Will said wryly. She joined him on the steps, picking up the grocery bags. Will smiled.“The eggs may yet survive,” he quipped.  
  
"Is no trouble." She offered her hand, which he managed to shake without dropping a crutch. At least he was getting used to the damn things; this situation was embarrassing enough without him making a complete fool of himself. " _Je m'appelle_ Nilou. You are in 4F, _oui_?"  
  
It took Will’s brain a moment to translate ‘quattre-eff’ into their apartment number. "I-yes. And I'm Will."  
  
"Okay." Will smiled at her resolute little nod and the way she squared her shoulders, her long dark hair cascading down over them like a waterfall. He thought, amused, that it was the kind of hair the Salon painters used to maintain the modesty of their nude goddesses. " _On y va_?"  
  
He waved a crutch at the stairs. "By all means. Ladies first."  
  
"How did you know I was in 4F?" Will asked after they'd cleared the first set of stairs.  
  
"I see you _et votre homme_ carrying up the bags. And the delivery man, he come to see you many times. Did you not bring many things?"  
  
"Ah, no. We left a lot of things behind."  
  
"You leave suddenly?" There was understanding in her voice.  
  
Will had to suppress a smile. That didn't even begin to cover it. "More like, we stayed unexpectedly."  
  
Nilou nodded seriously, as if no more needed to be said. After a few more steps, she said, " _Votre ami_ , he does not help with shopping?"  
  
"I like the walk. I'll bring a bag next time.”  
  
His chaperone made a dubious noise.  
  
“Please don't say anything to Benji. He worries enough as is, and he wouldn't let me out at all."  
  
"Should have elevator." Nilou smiled, apparently reassured Benji wasn't some heartless cad.  
  
"It's only temporary," Will said as they cleared the last stairs. He didn't know if he was talking about his leg or their stay. Hopefully both, he thought.  
  
Nilou nodded again. When they arrived at the door with the little brass 4F on it, she put a finger to her lips and quietly passed the grocery bags back to him. "I will keep secret," she whispered. "My apartment is 1C. If you get in trouble again, you ask me." She pressed the doorbell and made a dash for the stairway, giving him a thumbs up as she disappeared down the stairs.  
  
"Thank you!" Will whispered after her.

 

* * *

  
  
Seventeen years as a government agent caught up to Will in Paris. Maybe it was the leg wound, going to sleep with that nagging pain, or maybe it was just that his brain finally had the time to catch up to his body. No next mission on the books, no evaluations to keep a lid on things for. He’d had the occasional rough night over the years, of course, but nothing as consistent and exhausting as the persistent nightmares that plagued him now.  
  
Benji noticed, because of course he did. He wouldn’t be an IMF agent if he didn’t.  
  
The skin under his eyes grew heavy and dark with lack of sleep, and Will was aware the pain made him short-tempered sometimes. He could not stop this. At night, his mind replayed an endless loop of the worst missions of his career and then some, creating extravagant alternate universes where Jane died under his hands and Ethan broke every bone on the floor of the parking garage, universes where Sgt Pettey didn’t dive onto the bomb and his entire squad got wiped out in Iraq. During the day, the healing process gnawed at his thigh muscles. He didn’t dare rely on the pain medication he got from the local GP his fake identity attended, afraid of how tempting the blank numbness that descended over his senses when he took the Percocet was.  
  
He walked and walked and walked, building a maze for his thoughts. Perhaps he could have outrun them if not for his blasted leg.  
  
Still, he counted his blessings. Paris was beautiful. The bakery on their street did a great pain au chocolat. He’d read four books in the past week. He was living with Benji, and they were relatively safe. Maybe safer than they’d been in years, with no missions to risk their lives on. He worried about his leg, but, worst came to worst, there would always be a desk job waiting for him if the IMF came back online.

 

* * *

  
  
“Maybe if you didn’t leave your shoes in the hallway for me to trip over!” Will yelled with a thin edge of hysteria, blatantly disregarding the neat line of shoes on the rack.  
  
He couldn’t even really remember what their argument was about, or how it’d started. He thought he might have come home from his walk, pained and with a headache the size of Russia, to find Benji blasting Jet at full volume and the remains of last night’s take-out lying cannibalized on the coffee table. Normally he wouldn’t have minded, but today he’d snapped at Benji, and Benji had snapped back, and now they had been yelling for ten minutes. Brandt didn’t think the argument was really about the music or the frankly minimal mess anymore. Especially since Benji had immediately turned down the music when he’d seen Will wince.  
  
He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down before he said something unforgivable in the heat of the moment, and noted for the first time the undertone of fear in Benji’s voice.  
  
“That was one time! We can’t all live like we’re in a hazmat lab, Will, sometimes I’m going to leave something out for a few hours before it gets cleaned it up!”  
  
Will scoffed. “More like a few days,” he said, but he wasn’t yelling anymore.  
  
The sudden change in tone caught Benji off-guard. Will held up a hand to forestall his reaction, wanting to cut the argument off altogether.  
  
“Look, I don’t actually care about the music, or the take-out, or, or how much grounds go in the coffee machine and who takes it out after.” Will took another deep breath, leaning heavily on his cane. “I’m going to take some Percocet, and then I’m going to get some coffee across the street. We’re going to calm down, and when I come back we’re going to talk.” It was tempting to add ‘like normal human beings’ to the end there, but Benji would probably take that as an attack rather than the self-deprecating way Will intended, so he held his tongue.  
  
Benji visibly deflated at the mention of the pain medication. “I can get-“  
  
“It’s alright, I’ll go. Just, you know, take a few breaths and stop looking at me like you want to kill me.”  
  
“I don’t!”  
  
Honestly, Benji looked more worried than anything, but Will didn’t want pity. He hobbled into the kitchen, popped a pill from the strip in the cupboard above the sink, and swallowed it with some water.  
  
“Just stay here. I’ll be back, and we’ll…talk.”

 

* * *

  
  
The stairs hadn’t gotten any easier, especially not while trying to juggle the styrofoam coffee cups with the cane Benji had picked up at the antiques market last week when it became clear Will wouldn’t be outgrowing the crutches any time soon, and it took Brandt some effort not to work himself into a snit again. The whole point of this expedition had been to cool their tempers.  
  
The apartment was quiet. Benji was sitting on the couch, looking nervous with his hands clasped between his thighs. He’d cleared the take-away from the coffee table.  
  
“You alright?” he asked. “Should I-“  
  
Will bit his tongue. “No, it’s alright, I got it.”  
  
“I can-“  
  
“Benji, please don’t.”  
  
Will saw Benji’s face pale and his eyes drop to the carpet.  
  
“Sorry.”  
  
Will took off his coat and carefully hung it up in the hallway, leaning his cane against the wall, setting the plastic bag with the coffee on the floor, then picking both up again the make his way over to the couch. He tapped one of the coffee cups against Benji’s shoulder. “Here you go.”  
  
Benji took it without really looking at him. His mouth was tense. “Thanks.”  
  
Will flopped down on the other corner of the L-shaped couch.  
  
“So…” he started, not really knowing where to begin. “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”  
  
Benji’s jaw clenched. “Do you want to leave?” he asked urgently.  
  
“What?!”  
  
“Because I would get that, I mean. I know I’m not- not easy to live with, probably, and we have no idea how long this is going to last and I, I know neither of us counted on living together for _months_ , and I would understand.” Benji swallowed heavily. “Your identity has money and a passport. You could go somewhere if you wanted. Travel.”  
  
“Travel,” Will said dubiously. He finally noticed that what Benji was holding clasped between his hands was one of their fake passports. He’d bet just about anything it was Will’s. His stomach contracted painfully.  
  
“I’ll probably stay here,” Benji continued, “it’s easier to try and track the others when I have all my stuff in one place, and I might be able to help Ethan or Jane if they make contact.”  
  
“Benji,” Will scooted on the couch so he could grab Benji’s hands in his. The cane slid down to the floor with a clatter, making them both jump, but he didn’t pay it any mind. “I don’t want to go. I like it here.”  
  
“Yeah, Paris is nice,” Benji offered a crooked smile, though it didn’t really reach his eyes. “I could give you some space, if you wanted to stay. I’ve been thinking about looking up some family back home if I can make sure it’s safe-“  
  
“Benji!” This was not the conversation Will expected to be having. “That was not a break-up level fight!”  
  
Benji’s eyes went wide.  
  
“You know what I mean,” Will snapped. “I don’t mind living with you. I want to stay. I want _you_ to stay. But we’ve been cooped up in here for a month with no news and no idea when that’s going to change, of course we’re going to butt heads.”  
  
“Just cabin fever, that’s it, that’s what you think?”  
  
“Well, not just.” Will abruptly realized he was still holding Benji’s hands and let go. And that was probably another reason they shouldn’t be cooped up this close together. He cleared his throat. “We still don’t know what the shutdown’s about. I know I’m worried. Aren’t you?”  
  
Benji sighed. “Yeah.”  
  
“So I don’t think it’s fair to blame the tension all on us. We just need to keep track of what’s coming from where and not take it out on each other.”  
  
Benji was quiet for a moment. “I’m worried about Ethan doing something crazy-insane on his own,” he said. “Why hasn’t he asked for back-up or told us what’s going on?”  
  
Will rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, I know. I’d like to think he’d ask if he needed something. He might be getting help from someone else. We’re not his only contacts.” _And I’m not really in any shape to be of help to anyone,_ Will thought bitterly.  
  
“So we wait?” Benji said dubiously.  
  
Will tapped his cup against Benji’s knee, hoping to sound confident and comforting. “We wait.”  
  
They sat on the couch together, a heavy feeling settling in Will’s stomach.

 

* * *

  
  
The second month passed much the same as the first.  
  
They made some friends amongst the neighbors, most notably Nilou, the Algerian girl who had helped Brandt up the stairs before he’d had the good sense to invest in a backpack, who turned out to be a ballerina at the Ballet d’Opéra. They met some of her friends at the regular kitchen parties she threw, most of whom were employed at the ballet school and had come from all over the world. Benji hit it off with two Russian ballet dancers, Alex and Luka, who called Benji “Venyamin” and spoke in excited Russian with him about everything from the food to Russian cinema and literature. (Benji’s learning strategy during his language training had apparently been to mainline foreign movies until he could understand complex conversation. Will had always been more of a crammer, a practice he idly regretted now.) He stuck mostly to Nilou and the natives, to dust off his rusty French. It seemed prudent at least one of them should speak it decently if they were going to live here. Benji grinned at him across the table as he launched into an enthusiastic argument about Doctor Zhivago with Luka, looking happy and content at least for the night. The girls caught them at it and Will was forced to endure their cooing, though he didn’t mind as much as he could have. The wine was excellent and the food was plenty; he was feeling pretty content himself.  
  
They didn’t fall out of tone with the expat crowd that seemed to occupy most of their apartment building. Apart from the absence of an elevator, Brandt had to concede Benji had made a good choice re: their living arrangements.  
  
They still had their occasional spats, of course. It was only natural, living in such close quarters for such a prolonged period of time. It was like they were on the longest stake-out of their careers (which honestly wasn’t true _yet_ , but the lack of anything to watch just made the days seem longer), or like being stuck at basecamp in the desert, waiting for their marching orders, except they didn’t even have the occasional false alarm to shake things up. And always there was their _thing_ , lurking just under the surface, trying to crawl out into the open air of their domestic bubble whenever they stood too close at the kitchen counter, or Nilou’s friends goaded them into dancing after dinner, or when Benji smiled at him just so, bright and unconcerned, full of open affection. Will didn’t have the regular off-mission downtime to reinforce the locks on his own affection, and the doors were rattling.

 

* * *

  
  
Benji was making noises again.  
  
He was parked on his end of the couch - they had real furniture now - computer propped on his legs and headphones on in a long-familiar tableau. Will put down his book, waiting fondly for whatever came next.  
  
Whenever Benji was watching documentaries on his laptop he had the tendency to pull off his headphones and say random shit like, “Dude, Caravaggio totally stabbed a guy!” or “Will, did you know there are six hundred wild raccoons roaming Berlin?” It was equal parts annoying and endearing.  
  
This morning he’d found a documentary series on animal bones, and he’d been grabbing Will to look at things all day.  
  
“Whales are amazing!” Benji said excitedly, motioning at Will for him to come look at the screen.  
  
“If you’re about to show me a penis bone I absolutely will smack you,” Will intoned dryly, taking off his reading glasses.  
  
“No, no, look at its skull! It doesn’t look like a whale at all!” Benji pointed at the screen, pulling Will closer by the arm. Then, a moment later, he said, “Penis bone?”  
  
“Yeah, whales have like a meter long – you know what, never mind.”  
  
On the screen, some squirrelly British guy stood in front of a giant whale skull, talking animatedly about the gelatinous liquid in whale heads that enabled their sonar.  
  
“No, no, tell me, I’m interested,” Benji crossed his arms, grinning widely.  
  
Will sighed. He wasn’t getting out of this one. “Alright, so whales got this giant bone in their dicks, keeps it upright or something. They had one on _Jackass_ once.”  
  
Benji boggled at him. “ _Jackass?_ ”  
  
“Don’t even start with me,” Will laughed, pushing Benji away by the face.  
  
“Are you telling me you, Mr Chess and Architecture, Mr Benji Your Scifi Movies are Ridiculous and Implausible, enjoy watching a group of idiots mangle themselves in the stupidest of ways?”  
  
“Oh, shut up,” Will grumbled good-naturedly, giving Benji another shove.  
  
“Mr High and Mighty-“  
  
“It was ten years ago! It was a really long stakeout! That show isn’t even on air anymore!” Will yelled, laughing as he swatted away the finger Benji was trying to poke at his chest.  
  
Benji stilled suddenly, eyes narrowing. “But you remembered the whale penis?”  
  
“Oh my god,” Will groaned, dragging his hands across his eyes. “Just go back to watching your freaking documentary, will you. I’m trying to read.”  
  
Half an hour later, Benji slapped Will’s book out of his hands and yelled, “Hey, look, it’s your whale penis!” without taking the headphones off.

 

* * *

  
  
“You know, someday someone is going to find us based solely on your wacko internet traffic.”  
  
“No, they’re not,” Benji waved him off distractedly. “I’m using three accounts and four different IP addresses.”  
  
Will took a moment to consider that. “That seems like overkill just to watch some BBC.”  
  
“I pay my subscription. I have a _right_ to its programming.”  
  
“Why don’t you just watch Discovery like a normal person?” Brandt asked, amused.  
  
“It’s in French here!” Benji exploded. “And the BBC doesn’t take an hour and five commercial breaks to tell me an absolutely minimal amount of information! Or try to tell me aliens built the pyramids, or that there’s mermaids in Lake Michigan!”  
  
“I thought aliens _did_ build the pyramids,” Will said dryly.  
  
Benji gave him an absolutely deadpan look. “One of these days you’re going to have to stop making fun of me for liking _Stargate_.”  
  
“I don’t think so.”  
  
“You’re gonna run out of jokes eventually.”  
  
“Not before I make you pay for taking away two hours of my life I’ll never get back.”  
  
“Pffrt, you liked it. You just don’t wanna admit it’s a _masterpiece_.”  
  
Now that was just too much. It was Will’s turn to explode: “For what definition of a masterpiece?! The _Mona Lisa_ is a masterpiece, _Guernica_ is a masterpiece! I don’t know what _Stargate_ is but it sure as shit ain’t art!”  
  
Benji just grinned at him, looking delighted at his vehemence. “Your bourgeois outrage is adorable,” he said infuriatingly.    
  
Will realized that, as they had been arguing, they had fallen into their old habit of drawing too close together. He was close enough to count Benji’s eyelashes, should he have wanted to do so. Benji’s eyes were a clear blue, bright with good humor. The hoodie he was wearing had already been washed soft and was starting to pill. Will wanted to put his nose in the scruff on Benji’s cheeks, feel the rough bristles, press soft kisses to his throat-  
  
The old rules reasserted themselves with a kick - _Don’t_ \- and Will jerked away. Benji’s smile dimmed incrementally, betraying a long history of disappointments.  
  
_The mission always comes first. Don't reveal your identity to civilians._ _Don't fuck your teammates._ These rules were simple. Oh, he didn’t kid himself it never happened, that no two IMF agents had ever fallen into bed together, but the odds were terrible, and he didn’t have to look far for examples of just how spectacularly these things could go to shit. Jane and Ethan were a study in loss and regret, and even now he knew Julia wasn’t dead he'd hardly call that a happy ending.  
  
Perhaps it would have been possible, those first few crazy weeks. A simple proposition when it didn't have to mean anything - fuck it out, get back to work, move on. He couldn’t quite convince himself that was true, that he could have said to Benji, "Come to bed with me," on that pier in the Seattle harbor and gone back to work the next day as if nothing had happened, satisfied, calm, sated. He couldn’t believe they would have burned that quickly, even on three days' acquaintance. Even then he couldn’t have kissed Benji with distant passion, undressed him with impersonal, grabby hands that didn't want to linger, that didn't want to chart that territory for future explorations. They had already been moving into step with each other, synchronizing. Their nascent partnership, emerging as early as Dubai, would have betrayed him. He would have taken Benji's hand on that pier, and in the morning could not have left whatever happened after behind in a hotelroom.  
  
It was of little importance now. Any window of opportunity, if it ever existed, closed years ago.  
  
It wasn’t a question of reciprocity. Will read people like books, and Benji wasn't exactly written in braille. Will could count a dozen instances in the past year alone where they had teetered on the edge of a kiss, hiding close together in dark cupboards, that moment of stillness before kicking open the door to a roomful of danger, even side by side on Benji's cracked-leather couch there had been moments. Could count, too, the times he had bitterly regretted pulling away. When Lane took Benji he’d had barely a hope of getting him back in one piece. Will himself had had a close call with a nuclear reactor melting down in Texas, and he was missing two nails on his right hand from a run-in with some angry Ukrainians. In those moments, it had seemed cowardice, not reason, to keep his affection to himself. All he could think of while the Ukrainians tortured him was that if he got out of there he would finally kiss Benji, but when the team came for him he was unconscious, and in the cold light of day he could not make himself do it. It mattered too much. It risked, too much.  
  
He was aware he’d been blowing hot and cold at Benji for years. It was likely his inconsistency that had installed the kind of reticence in Benji that kept the sofa bed in the livingroom firmly made up into this third month, even though Will's injury was no longer so tender it would be disturbed by a second occupant of the double bedroom. They bantered, teased, played off each other, concocting plans in fluid harmony, jumped into danger together, crashed on the couch together, sat too close in bars and got drunk together. And always there would be _possibility_ building just underneath, and always Will would stamp it out just before it crested.

 

* * *

  
  
“So how did you meet then?” Nilou asked curiously one afternoon over coffee. She had no ballet students to see on Mondays, and seemed to consider it her duty to use her free time to fill Will’s.  
  
Nilou had, from their first meeting, assumed that Benji and Will were as much as married, despite the absence of rings. Will had never corrected her: it was a pleasant fiction. It worked as a cover story, and perhaps explained why they were not as keen on socializing with their neighbors as might be expected. And if it gave him a little stab of perverse pleasure every time Nilou referred to Benji as _ton homme_ , that was not something Will needed to consider too closely.  
  
“We met on a...business trip,” he said, hedging. He scanned the bistro out of habit, idly noting the exit routes, the argument going on in the kitchen between the pastry chef and the waiter, the smartly-dressed yuppie drinking espresso at the counter, and the windowcleaner balancing on a stepladder across the street.  
  
“I knew it!” Nilou said triumphantly. “ _Coup de foudre!_ Like lightning, no?”  
  
“Well, it was certainly...explosive,” Will said, unable to repress a smile.  
  
“Oh? How so?” Nilou sipped her tea with a curious gleam in her brown eyes.  
  
“Do you remember, a few years ago, there was a gas explosion at the Kremlin?”  
  
“Ah, yes, I think so? I thought that was _terroristes_.”  
  
“No, it was a gas explosion,” Will took a sip of his coffee to help keep a straight face. “But yes there was some talk about a terrorist attack at first. Anyway, Benji was working in Moscow at the time and I was there on business for the organisation I worked for. The city was in chaos and we both got stuck at the train station, you know, watching the television for news. The Russians weren’t too kindly disposed towards foreigners right then so we sorta got thrown together. They were a pretty intense few days.”  
  
“Did you…?” Nilou raised her eyebrows.  
  
“What? Oh no, it really wasn’t the time or place for, uh, romantic entanglements.”  
  
“But you must have liked each other a lot, _non_? To keep in contact, after.”  
  
“Well, yes.” They _had_ liked each other pretty quick. Enough to band together against Ethan on the second day of their acquaintance, actually. Will found himself smiling at the memory. For all that he was obfuscating the circumstances of their meeting, the essential facts were present: they had been thrown together in a harrowing situation. They had liked each other instinctively. They had continued to work together, and within a very short time, Will had recognized their mutual attraction. They were a team, and partners. They loved each other, in whatever way you wanted to frame that.  
  
But it had not been allowed to be. _He_ had not allowed it to be. It did not seem fair that thousand of miles and months removed from the IMF, living, for all intents and purposes, as a married couple, he still could not, though his reasons were becoming harder and harder to remember. Will swallowed against the bitter taste in his mouth. “As luck would have it, we were both recalled to the U.S. and were able to see each other, even work together on occasion. And the rest was history,” he finished, unwilling to contrive the details of their romance, and let the intervening years sketch themselves.  
  
“And now you are here,” she said, her eyes crinkling impishly as she smiled. “So, when you are better, will you go back to work or stay trophy husband?”  
  
Will broke out laughing, wiping at his eyes a little when they teared up. The concept was hilarious – _trophy husband_ – though at the moment also not entirely inaccurate. Benji _was_ doing most of the work these days.  
  
“I don’t know,” he said honestly.  
  
Nilou patted his arm. “He good for you. Keep you in nice things,” she added, giving an illustratory tug at the sleeve of Will’s expensive dress shirt.   
  
“That he does,” Will found himself smiling fondly, fiddling with his coffee. _He looks after me_ , he thought, the truth of it too vulnerable to voice.   
  
What was he going to do, indeed.

 

* * *

  
  
For the first few moments, Benji didn’t know what had woken him up. Then he registered the sound of the shower running and realized Will had stumbled past his bed on the way to the bathroom. Benji’s eyes fell worriedly on the stack of books that had clattered onto the floor from the sidetable. Will must have been in bad shape.  
  
The nightmares had been getting worse lately. Benji had refrained from commenting, having long since learned PTSD was subject non grata with most IMF agents, a practice he suspected didn’t help the situation one little bit. He briefly considered allowing Will to work through the episode in private, then decided against it. These things were _not_ better left alone.  
  
He threw off the blankets and got up, leaving the books for the morning and going directly to the bathroom. He opened the door cautiously, trying to decide whether he should make noise to warn Will he was coming or if a knock would just work him up more. It was nearly a full moon and enough light came in through the little window that he could see, so he didn’t turn on the light either, not wanting to blind or startle Will.  
  
Benji’s heart clenched. Will was sitting in the shower, soaked in his t-shirt and boxers, knees drawn up to his chest.  
  
Benji stepped forward. The tiles were cold against his bare feet, and he shivered. Closer now, he could make out Will muttering anxiously to himself as he scrubbed at his forearms and face. He still hadn’t noticed him.  
  
Standing in front of the shower partition, it struck him suddenly that the glass was completely clear. No steam rose from the shower. Which meant the water was cold.  
  
Goddammit, Benji was really not equipped to deal with this shit, except for how he had been dealing with it for the past few months. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen Will this delirious, but the shower was definitely new. Benji threw a regretful look at his own sweatpants. Well, there was nothing for it. He opened the shower door, very quietly, and crouched down in front of Will, ignoring the spray that hit his clothes and face and wet the bathroom tiles around him.  
  
“Hey,” Benji said softly. He reached up a careful hand and turned the temperature of the water up. Will was looking at him, making eye contact. His chest heaved. He hadn’t jumped when Benji had suddenly materialized in the shower.  
  
“It’s not mine,” Will said, his voice stretched thin. He looked at Benji with glassy, pained eyes that only half-seemed to recognize him. He gave the impression he was not speaking to Benji himself, but to some dream-addled version of him only Will could see.  
  
“What’s not yours?” Benji inquired. He moved into the spray, sitting down against the shower wall next to Will and put an arm around him, dragging him against his chest. Will went but didn’t stop rubbing his arms.  
  
“The blood,” Will said, almost philosophically. “It’s not mine but it won’t go away.”  
  
Benji’s mind flashed on the memory of Will in Frankfurt, covered in the bloodspatter of the executed German scientists. His eyes had had that same dissociative stare, as if the part of him that processed emotion had decided to take a siesta.  
  
Benji rubbed his fingers in the wet hair at Will’s nape, massaging gently as he swallowed down a wave of nausea. Will leaned against him, hiding his face against Benji’s shoulder. “It’s alright, I’ll help. It’s alright,” Benji soothed. He looked around for a moment until he located the shampoo bottle and grabbed it.  
  
He turned the shower almost all the way down and rubbed the shampoo between his palms, then down Will’s arms, rubbing it gently into his skin. Will shuddered, probably at the slick feeling of the shampoo on his skin, but he didn’t try to squirm away. He watched silently as Benji kneaded and washed his hands, his heart rate slowing down where Benji could feel it in his wrists.  
  
“Hey,” he said again, nudging Will softly with his chin when he’d washed off the last remains of the shampoo. “You want we get out of this shower?”  
  
Will nodded.  
  
Benji towed him out of the shower cabin, not caring that they were dripping all over the floor. He tried not to notice how Will’s clothes clung to his body, outlining the definition in his chest and legs, especially since he was about to peel Will out of them. It was just his luck that the only time he got to touch Will like this, Will was too out of it to enjoy. He efficiently stripped them both, towelled them down, and grabbed the emergency sweatpants stashed in the cabinet under the sink. By the time he was done, Will was looking a little perkier, if still rattled.  
  
“You probably don’t want to go back to bed right now, do you? Want to watch some TV?” Benji asked, when he’d lead Will to his own pullout bed in the livingroom. It had a decent view of the telly, and it would be alright if Will eventually collapsed into sleep there, exhausted as he always was after a difficult night.  
  
“Okay,” Will said, pliant.  
  
Benji tried to give him some space, but when he sat down on the couch-bed Will pulled on his wrist, tugging until Benji sat down next to him. Their hands were clasped together between them, and Benji felt his face grow warm. He really was not the right person to be offering this kind of comfort to Will.  
  
Eventually, Benji’s heart rate went back to normal – Will just needed company, needed someone to touch him and keep him in the here and now - and they sank back into the bed, not really watching the old black and white movie playing on the television.  
  
Will lay against him, their bodies pressed sleepily together, Will’s head on his shoulder. His breathing was even, and Benji thought he might fall asleep in the next few minutes, but then he felt Will’s lips brush against his neck. The movement was sloppy, almost no pressure behind it, but the intent was unmistakable.  
  
Benji nearly shot off the bed, except Will’s body was weighing him down. “Will?” And then Will’s mouth was on his.  
  
Soft, uncoordinated. Will’s.  
  
Benji gasped, and Will’s tongue pressed in dreamily.  
  
Every nerve in his body had gone paralyzed with shock. This was- He couldn’t-  
  
The thing that finally got him to move was Will’s expression. Eyes half-closed, heavy-lidded with sleep, the dreaminess was terrifyingly similar to the faraway look from the shower.  
  
This wasn’t Will. Or it was, but only partly. This was maybe 80% percent of him, and Will at full capacity had never let them go here, ever. Not in four years.   
  
“You should get some sleep,” Benji said, voice squeaking embarrassingly, except he had gone beyond embarrassment. He needed to get up and leave. Now.  
  
“Stay,” Will struggled fitfully as Benji pushed him under the covers, but he didn’t try to get up.  
  
“I can’t.”  
  
“I wish you could,” Will mumbled forlornly. One of his hands curled in the sheet, looking exposed and small.  
  
_Yeah, buddy, me too_ , Benji thought bitterly as he made his escape. He grabbed one of the books off the floor on his way to the bedroom. There was no way he was sleeping any more tonight.

 

* * *

  
  
Benji was not ready for the sight that greeted him in the kitchen the next morning.  
  
Will was leaning against the counter in his white cable knit sweater - the one Benji could never decide must have been acquired from either a flea market or a high-end fashion store - and loose jeans with the cuffs rolled up. His tan feet looked soft and vulnerable against the tiles, and behind him the coffee pot was letting out a series of quiet percolating ticks. The table was set with croissants and jam.  
  
“Hey,” Will said, almost shyly, when he spotted Benji in the doorway.  
  
“Hey,” Benji said back.  
  
“You want coffee? I think it’s almost done.”  
  
“Yeah, please.” Benji supposed the normal thing would have been to sit down, but there was a stillness to the room that prevented him. Will looked like a fucking GQ spread, or one of those Hilfiger ads that were all denim and campfires and beautiful blond Americans. Benji would accuse him of doing it on purpose if Will didn’t always look like that.  
  
Will took a deep breath and fiddled with the coffee mugs on the counter. “I think I need to set something right.”  
  
Benji blew out his breath. “Will…” He scratched at his neck, suddenly feeling hot and cold at the same time. “You don’t have to explain anything to me.”  
  
“No, I do.”  
  
Benji sighed. “Okay. Can I at least have my coffee first?”  
  
Will’s lips pulled into a sudden grin, abruptly replacing the hangdog look in that expressive way his face had. Benji couldn’t help but return the smile.  
  
“Yes,” Will said. He handed over one of the steaming mugs. “Let’s eat. And then I’ve got something to show you.”

 

* * *

  
  
“So where are we going?” Benji asked. They’d gone down Boulevard Saint-Marcel, up Fossés, and were approaching Rue Buffon. The minarets of the Grande Mosque were visible above the roofs of the distinctive Haussmannien apartments. Will matched strides next to him, cane tapping against the pavement and a bag of sandwiches held in his other hand.  
  
Will just gave him an impression of the Cheshire Cat. “You’ll see. We’re almost there.”  
  
They rounded the corner onto Cuvier, and Benji was about to ask again when Will took his arm and pulled him through a heavy wrought-iron gate.  
  
“Aren’t these the botanical gardens?” They were still close to their apartment so Benji was vaguely aware of the high-walled park and museums, but he’d never had cause to go inside.  
  
“Among other things,” Will said. He hadn’t let go of Benji’s elbow. In fact, he’d put his arm through Benji’s and was leading him down a path into a park. “The zoo’s just reopened after the winter, but there’s somewhere else I want to go first.”  
  
Benji gave up trying to figure out what was going on.  
  
Will lead them between a row of trees and past a collection of old, academic-looking buildings until they came upon the last in line: a vast, gray monstrosity in the fin de siècle style. A life-sized, plastic model of a tapir stood outside, followed by a weathered dinosaur near the entrance. Benji looked around curiously. He could just see, beyond the little ticket office where Will bought them tickets in easy, lilting French-  
  
A giant hall filled with skeletons.  
  
Antique oak cabinets lined the walls, stuffed to the ceiling with animal skeletons of all denominations and sizes. In the middle of the room, an incomprehensible sea of large skeletons – horses, moose, walruses, giraffes – bulged in a long line that spanned the entire hall. At the back a gigantic whale skeleton loomed over everything. The whole room looked like it had been teleported there from some kind of Victorian naturalist’s wet dream.  
  
Will squeezed Benji’s hand, which had somehow ended up in his. “Cool, huh?”  
  
“Will, what the…” Benji couldn’t figure out where to look. There was so much to _see_ ; the simple amount of bones and skulls and skeletons was mind-boggling, and their faded-white figures seemed to merge and shift together in the chaos.  
  
“This,” Will gave an expansive wave, “is the Galerie d’Anatomie Comparée.”  
  
“This place is insane,” Benji said, voice gone slightly breathless with awe. “Where do we _start_?”  
  
Will smiled, gentle and happy. He pulled Benji over to the first cabinet. “Here,” he gave another wave at the room at large without letting go of Benji’s hand. “We have time.”  
  
They spent the morning and beginning of the afternoon going around the gallery, trying to translate the note cards of the stranger animal skeletons, which were calligraphed in French and Latin on thick yellowed paper and looked like they hadn’t been redone since the early 1900s. There was a cabinet at the back with unusual skeletons: a two-faced cow skull fused in the middle, two conjoined deer fetuses in a glass jar of alcohol, even a creepy cabinet with human baby skeletons, their hollow eye sockets staring out soullessly, which gave them both the heebiejeebies and chased them up the spiral staircase to the second level, where they were greeted by a mammoth and several other prehistoric animals. An arctodus stood twelve feet tall on its hind legs, claws against a fake tree stump, and a cow-sized armadillo filled up a whole case on its own. There were even some smaller stuffed animals with that endearing slightly-hapless look common to antique taxidermy projects.  
  
Finally, they ran out of animals to look at and phone battery to Google Translate the name cards, and they headed towards the exit, chatting pleasantly about the things they had seen. Benji bought a tote bag with the museum’s name and a line of dinosaur skeletons on it at the tiny museum shop, which consisted of a single table and was served by the ticket office as the cashier’s. It had started raining about an hour into their visit and hadn’t let up, so that the rain pattered soothingly against the roof and windows.  
  
They stepped outside and under Benji’s umbrella.  
  
 “Did you like it?” he asked, even though it must have been obvious that Benji had.  
  
“Very much,” Benji beamed at him, pulling Will closer against his side under the guise of staying under the umbrella. “So what else is here? You mentioned a zoo?”  
  
“Yeah. There’s also a geological museum with rocks and stuff, and the Galerie d’Evolution if you wanna see some animals with their skins still on. And the botanical gardens, as you said.” Benji mulled that over as they picked their way through the park, which was mostly empty, it being a weekday. He was surprised when Will pulled them to a stop as they passed through a little courtyard lined with rosebushes that would bloom come summer. “Look, what I said this morning, about needing to set something right…”  
  
Benji looked at him apprehensively, holding his breath without noticing. They had been in each other’s space all day, teetering on the verge of something more. Benji wondered if his hope was about to be dunked in a cold bath. “Yeah?”  
  
Except Will stepped closer to him. The rain pattered against the umbrella, and Will’s hand reached for his neck, and then Will’s warm breath was against his mouth and Will was pressing a kiss to his lips, nothing wild like last night but gentle and strong. Determined.  
  
Benji closed his eyes and let himself sink into it.  
  
When they parted, Will didn’t pull away, but nuzzled his nose against Benji’s cheek. Quietly, he murmured, “You see, last night really was not a spur of the moment thing.”  
  
Benji gasped in a short breath, the momentousness of what they were doing hitting him all at once, and Will took the opportunity to kiss him again, and deeper.  
  
“Wh-“ _Why_ , Benji wanted to ask, but that was stupid, you didn’t ask people why they loved you, you didn’t know _why_ you loved people, so he switched tracks and gasped, “When? Since when?” as they slid in and out of kisses.  
  
Will’s hand slid down to his jaw, holding him firmly as he looked him in the eye, and Benji’s breath caught at the emotion he saw there. Bare, where he’d only ever glimpsed a shimmer of a hint before.  
  
“I think I’ve seen enough animals for today,” Benji said determinedly, laying his hand over Will’s on the handle of his cane.  
  
Will burst into a laugh. “Think you could stand to see some human anatomy?”  
  
Benji cackled. “Oh, you bet.”

 

* * *

  
  
They stumbled into the bedroom already kissing. Will's cane had been abandoned with a careless clatter in the hallway and his coat had ended up thrown over the couch. They'd almost tripped over Benji's jacket when it had been dropped near their feet, but neither of them had even spared the thing a look.  
  
"God, you've got no idea how long I've wanted this," Benji said when they landed on the bed and Will had crawled on top of him.  
  
"I do, I do," Will said, dropping wild kisses on Benji's mouth. "I know, I did- I do too. I should have- earlier..." He trailed off, losing track of what he was saying, knowing only that Benji's mouth was underneath his to be kissed, that Benji's body was writhing warm against him. That this urgency was going to burn him up if they didn't get somewhere soon enough.  
  
"Fuck," Benji moaned, arching back against the bed as Will wrestled with his belt buckle.  
  
"I got you, I got you," Will said, slipping his hand into the fly. "Fuck."  
  
He couldn’t stop kissing Benji. Four years of longing was rushing out of him in one long breath, one final opening of the floodgates. Benji’s hands clenched tight at the back of his neck, not letting him go. There was a desperate air to the kiss, too hard, as if Benji still couldn’t quite believe it, and Will kissed him like he was trying to outrun something instead of slowing down and taking the time to reassure him, because he couldn’t kiss him any other way this first time.

But he _was_ sure.

Hang the rules, and his restraint, and his fear. There were many uncertainties in his life, but the fact that he loved Benji was not one of them. That he had always loved him, from the day they’d met-

He pulled his mouth away to say that, say more, tell Benji to take his shirt off, he wanted to see him, but Benji shifted his mouth to Will’s neck and suddenly the only thing that wanted to pass Will’s lips was a moan, deep and hungry.

“Benji,” Will gasped as Benji sucked determinedly at his neck, at his collarbones where they were bared in the gaping collar of his sweater.

Benji’s hands were sliding up his back under the soft wool, strong strokes that were neither gentle nor rough. Grounding, mapping.

“Benji.” He was panting. His mind felt thick and he had a brief, uncomfortable flashback to last night-

“Benji,” he said urgently, finally opening his eyes to take in the man under him, needing to dispel the ghosts.

Benji was sitting almost upright, one arm behind himself to support his weight and part of Will’s, so he could press kisses to Will’s throat and chest. His buttondown had twisted around his chest a little and come undone at the top. Will was sat in his lap, straddling his hips, glad of the give of his loose jeans.

Their eyes found each other, finally, and everything seemed to stop.

Their breathing was loud in the quiet room.

Benji’s eyes asked a question, aided by the slide of his hands along Will’s spine, lifting the sweater incrementally, and this was it, the moment where Will refused to hesitate. He pulled off the sweater. He undid the button on his jeans. He twisted to the side to kick them off, sliding back into Benji’s lap again immediately. His leg twinged at him but he didn’t pay it any mind.

“Will…” Benji said, wonderingly, and dammit, if this still wasn’t real to Benji yet Will was damn well going to make it.

“Come on,” his hands went to Benji’s shirt, starting at the top and working down efficiently, “you too. I want to see you.”

Benji struggled out of the shirt, throwing it off the bed behind them, and pushed down his jeans and boxers between Will’s legs, toeing out of them the rest of the way. He’d lain down to do it, and stayed there, panting up at Will. He quirked a smile. “Come on then.”

While Will was busy staring, Benji pulled one of his legs from between Will’s and hooked it over his hip. He pulled, and Will tipped forward, catching himself on his elbows. Benji’s nose nuzzled his. “You’re looking at me like you’ve seen a miracle,” he said softly, wondering.

Will’s voice was rough. “You are,” he said, feeling the truth of it take root inside him. He’d never felt the easy, instinctive like he had with Benji with anyone else, never this deep sense of partnership and joy. It was, in his life, a singular experience. He’d always been a loner; it was not something he had ever thought to look for or expect. Yet he had it now.

And it was a miracle, too, that they had made it this far, made it here at all. Not even the part where they were having sex, just the fact of them both surviving long enough to be here defied all odds. So many times they had outrun death at the last minute. Will swallowed around the lump in his throat.  
  
Benji smiled softly up at him. His hands came up to cradle Will’s face, and he pulled him into a soft, generous kiss. Will relaxed into it until their chests were touching, his thighs spread wide to lower himself. Benji’s fingers stroked his jaw and throat, and then down his chest and thighs, until the tips slid into the legs of his boxers, teasing there.  
  
“What do you want to do?” he asked, rocking down. His breath was short and the words were strained.  
  
Benji let out a laugh and raised an eyebrow, as if to say, _are you stupid, I want to do everything_.  
  
“I mean, right now, what do you want to do right now?” Will panted. Fuck, his hips were rocking down against Benji’s stomach, just enough friction to drive him crazy.  
  
One of Benji hands moved, sliding into the front of his boxers to grasp him tight, and Will moaned loudly. “Ah! Fuck.”  
  
“I don’t know.” There was a smirk in Benji’s voice, “I like this alright.”  
  
“But. I-“ Benji raised another eyebrow at him, and Will decided this was definitely the moment to shut up and put his money where his mouth was. Or his mouth where his brain was, or whatever, as he fell to Benji’s throat, pressing wet kisses there. Benji grunted and tipped his head back to bare his neck.  
  
He had two hands in Will’s boxers now, one on his dick and the other on his rump, dragging him into Will’s uneven thrusts. Will was sitting too far up Benji’s hips to be able to reach for his dick in return, but judging from the moans pushing out of his throat Benji was getting something somewhere.  
  
“You could fuck me,” Will gasped, even though he wasn’t sure either of them was going to last long enough to get there. He felt Benji should know it was on the table though.  
  
Benji groaned. “Don’t think we’ve got any supplies.”  
  
Will thought of the last time the IMF had given them the standard post-mission medical exam, now four months ago. He hadn’t had sex with anyone since and if Benji had he’d probably have known about it, but still, they probably shouldn’t. “There’s lube in the nightstand,” he said anyway.    
  
Benji cast a longing look at the drawer, biting his lip, and drew his bent legs further up the bed until his thighs pressed against Will’s ass. “I don’t think I’m going to last,” he said apologetically.  
  
Will nodded, conceding. His leg probably wasn’t up to it anyway, not after holding this position for as long as he already had. “Alright. But soon, yeah?”  
  
Benji smiled brilliantly. “You bet.”  
  
When Will leaned down to kiss him, Benji flung an arm around his neck and rolled him over. He peeled Will out his boxers, pressed him into the bed, and got serious about jerking him off. Will lay back and let it happen, planting kisses against Benji’s mouth, gulping in air when he could. His entire body throbbed hotly, their bodies slick and sweaty where they pressed together. It was too much: Benji rubbed his thumb roughly across the head of Will’s cock and Will came, arching on the sheets.  
  
“Fuck,” Benji breathed, strained. “I can’t believe-“  
  
Will lunged up to kiss him, cutting him off. His coordination was still off and they tipped over, narrowly avoiding sliding off the edge of the bed. A stab of adrenaline shot through him as he corrected his balance, and they both burst out laughing.  
  
“Careful there, soldier,” Benji said, shifting them towards the middle of the bed. “Are you _trying_ to injure yourself?”  
  
Will didn’t dignify that with a reply. His limbs still felt rubbery from orgasm, but he pressed a kiss to the center of Benji’s chest, hands sliding up his calves against the soft gingery hair. Put Benji’s knee over his shoulder and sucked him down.  
  
“Oh god,” Benji moaned faintly, hands moving into Will’s hair. “Fuck.”  
  
_Come on_ , Will thought, sliding roughly down, forgoing technique in favor of eagerness. He wanted to see Benji come, and then he wanted to do it all over again and again and again until their luck ran out.  
  
Benji threw his head back, letting out a long, thready moan, and used the leverage from his foot on the bed to thrust into Will’s movements. His hands had left Will’s hair to lie open-palmed against the bed, twitching slightly every time Will’s mouth went down. Will watched him, mesmerized, his heart clenching tight with a complicated mess of joy and longing.  
  
“God, I love you,” Benji sighed, eyes closed, utterly sincere as he came.

 

* * *

  
  
“How’s your leg?” Benji asked at length, when their sweat had cooled and they lay together on the covers. Will’s arm stretched along the pillows under Benji’s neck. Benji’s hand traced idle patterns on Will’s stomach.  
  
“It’s alright.” The torn muscle throbbed warmly with each pulse of blood, but it wasn’t quite a real pain, more a nagging soreness. It was a small price to pay for their afternoon. “It’s not too bad.”  
  
Benji’s lips thinned. He moved down the bed, pushing up the leg of Will’s boxershorts so he could see. It didn’t look terrible, just a long straight cut of thick pink scar tissue. The split muscle had grown back together not quite right, and though Will could use it, it was prone to overexertion and sudden pains. He could walk unaided for short periods, but not without aggravating the wound. Running was out of the question.    
  
Benji ran careful fingers over the raised skin. “It’s not getting better, is it?”  
  
Will swallowed hard. “It might, a little. But I won’t be passing physical, no.”  
  
Benji bent his head, Will thought to hide whatever emotion was on his face, but- he leaned down and kissed the scar, achingly gentle. Will felt a lump form in his throat. His fingers twisted into the hair at Benji’s nape, soft and a little sweaty from their roll around the bed.  
  
“Good thing I like you for your brain,” Benji laid his head on his stomach and smiled at him, “and the IMF does too.”  
  
Will couldn’t help but snort. It was the same consolation he’d been using to reassure himself. If the IMF recalled them, he could return to his analyst’s position, maybe even his diplomatic duties if needed. It wasn’t like he hadn’t done it before. The certainty of losing his field certification wasn’t so great a blow as all that. After all, he had been in and out of the field for the past ten years, sometimes by choice, sometimes not. He was pushing 45 - retirement from active duty hadn’t been that far off.  
  
It stung in the everyday sense, though. He was frustrated by the restriction of movement, the dent the injury made in his stamina and range. In extremis, he could run or fight – the muscles in his thigh worked, it would just hurt a whole lot. But the pain would restrict many more mundane activities that weren’t really worth powering through agonizing pain for.  
   
“Have you heard anything? From the IMF? From Ethan?” Will asked.  
  
Benji’s smile dimmed a little. “Ethan says to stay put. He won’t tell me what’s happened, says it’s too dangerous. All I know is what you know: someone infiltrated the IMF and whatever they did made the Senate burn the program to the ground.  
  
“Remember the CIA and Treadstone, ten years ago? They tried to bump off all the operatives, make like the program never existed. Whoever infiltrated took something and I think Ethan’s trying to get it back, but he wants everyone to stay in hiding so they can’t be used as leverage. Or killed,” Benji shuddered. He had never found out who the henchmen in the reststop had belonged to.  
  
Will stroked Benji’s back, trying to do what he could to soothe him. “He might be in the best position to judge.”  
  
Benji’s muscles tensed under his hand. “He’s got a martyr complex a mile wide, he’s not going to ask anyone for help unless he’s got no choice. And God knows what else is happening with the IMF out of commission.”  
  
“If he really needs it, he’ll ask,” Will assured him. “He always has before.”  
  
Benji burrowed further against Will’s stomach. “I guess.” He let out a long-suffering sigh. “I’m just so tired of waiting.”  
  
Will sighed too, shifting to a more comfortable position against the pillows. “Yeah, me too, buddy.”

 

* * *

  
  
Will woke disoriented and alone. The angle of the sunlight told him he’d slept through the night; all in all, not a big surprise after the short night he’d had yesterday. The empty apartment, though, that was another story.  
  
He threw off the covers and on a shirt, and padded around the apartment. He felt like he was seeing it again for the first time. Just two days ago, he had taken everything here for granted. The apartment, and its contents, were real to him now in some new way. He couldn’t place the sensation: it was strangely like adjusting to a new pair of glasses when your prescription had been upped.   
  
There was the French press, and there were the movie posters with Bergman clinging defiantly to Bogart and Grant, and in the hallway were their shoes piled messily, one pair missing. His coat was hanging on the rack – Benji must have moved it off the couch this morning before going out.  
  
Brandt felt that perhaps he should be more worried about Benji’s absence, but somehow he couldn’t muster the belief that Benji had left him, on this morning of all mornings. He ate some yoghurt out of the fridge – having missed dinner the night before – and headed to the shower.  
  
He didn’t have to wait long. He heard Benji come in, first quietly into the hallway, and then into the bathroom with a confident stride. Will smiled to himself, refusing to turn around, entertaining himself instead by listening to Benji mutter faintly as he stripped out of his clothes. Finally, the shower door opened and Benji pressed against his back and into the spray.  
  
“Hey, “ Benji said, tucking his chin over Will’s shoulder.  
  
Will turned his head slightly to meet his eyes. “Hey.”  
  
“Now what could you be doing in here, huh?” Benji said impishly. He pointedly flicked his eyes down to where Will had been unable to remain unaffected by thoughts of last night - afternoon? - nor the prospect of Benji’s return. Will just smirked. He put one arm against the tile wall to steady them: Benji was leaning most of his weight on him and the tub was slippery-wet under their feet.  
  
“I think I have to set something right as well,” Benji continued, his hands sliding over Will’s hips. Will made an inquiring noise.  
  
“Yesterday when I said I liked you for your brain, that might have been slightly disingenuous,” Benji said. “It’s possible I have some appreciation for the visual too.”  
  
“Well, you never said _just_ my brain,” Will countered, grinning. He pushed back against Benji. “People are complex, multi-faceted beings. It’s only right that you- Ah!” He gasped as Benji unceremoniously put his hand on his dick, “Only right that you appreciate all their – oh, fuck – all their different aspects.”  
  
“Well, you would know,” Benji said lowly, tugging at Will’s earlobe with his teeth. Will moaned into it, leaning back against him, and let the sensation wash over him.  
  
He leaned his head back against Benji’s shoulder, tipping back to press a kiss to his jaw. “Where did you go?”  
  
A strip of condoms appeared in his peripheral vision to join the shampoo in the shower caddy. “Shopping,” Benji said, the smirk evident in his voice.  
  
Will moaned. “Oh, fuck.”

 

* * *

  
  
They ended up back in bed, fulfilling any promises made the night before and then some. Will lay in bed, sated and sore – it had been a while and they’d been too wired to really go slow – his face smushed into the pillow. The strange sense of clarity that had come over him was still there. He’d expected to have to fend off a few bouts of worry about the direction their relationship had taken, decided though he was on the course, but he just felt peaceful, settled into himself in some new way.  
  
Benji tapped him on the shoulder, handing him some of the Percocet and a glass of water with a concerned little smile.  
  
“I’m fine,” Will assured, but didn’t refuse the medication. He popped the pill, drained the glass, and pulled Benji back onto the bed. Benji went without fuss, curling comfortably against him. Will plopped his head onto Benji’s bony shoulder. He could probably sleep more, if he wanted.  
  
“I ran into Nilou on the stairs,” Benji said conversationally. “We’re expected for dinner.”  
  
Will let out a huff, not really prepared to commit to any dinner plans yet.  
  
“Should I make our excuses?” Benji was smirking now. “Tell her you’re confined to bed.”  
  
“I doubt she’d have any trouble figuring out what we’re really doing.”  
  
Benji shrugged. “It’s probably what she’s thought every other time we bailed.”  
  
It had been easier to let their friends have their own ideas about why they cancelled late on days where Will had been a little too shaky to go out. A pleased glow spread in Will’s stomach at the thought that this time, Nilou’s suspicions would be justified. Staying in bed with Benji was definitely better than pacing the apartment in a hypervigilant haze.  
  
“Are you okay?” Benji asked in the quiet that followed.  
  
Will frowned. “Yeah, I just told you, I’m fine.”  
   
“No, I mean,” Benji waved a hand, “with all this, I guess. You never- before. I always figured you had your reasons, you know, except for when I thought it was all in my head and I was just imagining things – that drove me fucking crazy – but I always thought there was a reason you didn’t want to.”  
  
“I always _wanted_ to,” Will said, jolting upright. “I always wanted you, but I _couldn’t_.” If Will felt like psychoanalyzing himself he could probably have gone into how a lifelong history with rigidly-structured institutions - boarding school, West Point, and eventually the IMF - might have instilled a deeply-ingrained aversion to rulebreaking. Even if, in recent years, he had learned to take some leeway when the situation demanded it, these things were always easier when it came to the big, world-ending stuff than the microcosm of everyday life. In any case, Benji didn’t really need him to say all that. He knew Will, he had the necessary pointers, he had probably figured that stuff out years ago.  
  
So instead, Will said: “It doesn’t end well. Maybe if I just wanted to fuck you, that’d have been okay, but it’s always been too much. It’s dangerous when you take personal feelings into the field.”  
  
Benji opened his mouth to protest.  
  
“I know, I know, people _are_ emotional. You can’t leave it at the door, no matter how hard you try. I think we’ve all proven that several times over already,” Will smiled a little sadly at the memory of Benji captured in London, his life leveraged for an act their team should never have agreed to under any guideline. “I always just figured, if I stuck to the rules, the damage would be limited.”  
  
The look of worry on Benji’s face hadn’t dissipated. “So why now?”  
  
_Because you can’t live a life like that. Because you have always had my back. Because I’ve already lost everything else._ Will didn’t say any of that. It was hard to articulate the specific parameters of the change in him. He leaned in and kissed Benji. Benji’s beard was scruffy and Will let himself feel the bristles against his chin, already rubbed sensitive from their kissing. They parted, though not by much. Will pressed their foreheads together and breathed deeply. “I’m tired of waiting.”  
  
Benji pressed in for another kiss, deep and a little playful to brighten the mood, which had turned quite somber. _My fault_ , Will thought regretfully. It was a good thing Benji brought out the good humor in him, and a large part of why he loved him.  
  
“It’s worth it,” Benji promised between kisses. “And this is a good time.”  
  
Will made an agreeing noise. It had been on his mind as well, but he hadn’t wanted to sound too pragmatic, though he supposed he often was, to a fault even. “We’re here now. No missions to affect, no real threats.” Safe. “We got time to figure things out.”  
  
Worry crept back into Benji’s eyes. “So what if we get a phonecall tomorrow calling us back?”  
  
Will took Benji’s hand where it was lying between them and laced their fingers together. “Then I guess we’re going to have to figure things out a little faster.”  
  
Benji’s smile was brilliant.

 

* * *

  
  
  
**EPILOGUE:**  
  
Summer in Paris is like something out of a fairy tale. The trees in the lane are in full bloom, and they can hear the happy-sounding roars of the lions when they walk along the high walls encircling the Ménagerie. Will’s skin is tan from his time spent outside at the markets and parks. He’s wearing a white cotton t-shirt, hair slightly mussed, a quiet, content-looking smile on his lips that Benji knows would be matched by his eyes if they weren’t hidden behind sunglasses. He’s still got the cane. He’s still everything Benji has ever wanted.  
  
He’s got the phone cradled against his shoulder as he watches Will wait for him on the corner, already thinking of the extravagant lunch he’s going to order at the restaurant, and whether Will will let himself be coaxed home before dinner at Sasha’s so they can spend some time in bed. They clock plenty of hours there in the evenings, but Benji loves kissing Will in the afternoon sunlight, unhurriedly, for hours. Will is starting work at the university in September – he’s been a lot steadier lately, though there are still nightmares - soon both he and the sun will be around a lot less. They need to pick up groceries on the way back, Benji thinks, but if they’re quick they’ll have time.  
  
He absently counts down the clicks of the phone, waiting for the by now long-familiar voice message telling him the number he is trying to call is no longer in service.  
  
The phone rings.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> German dialogue:  
> “Was ist passiert?” – What happened?  
> “Um. Unfall. Autounfall,” – Accident. Car accident.  
> “Bitte warten Sie hier.” – Please wait here.  
> “Wo ist er?” – Where is he?  
> “Wir sind gleich da,” – We’re almost there  
> “Kann ich ihn sehen?” – Can I see him?  
> “Gehoren Sie zur Familie?” – Are you family?  
> "Ich verstehe." – I understand
> 
> French dialogue:  
> "Puis-je vous aider?" – Can I help you?  
> "On y va?" – Shall we go?


End file.
